Letters
by Furius
Summary: Feanor and Nerdanel's final fluff.
1. Remembered

Mahtan let the man in with some reluctance.  
  
"A letter." The weary messenger of Arafinwe said.  
  
Cautiously, she opened the soiled envelope, feeling a tugging alacrity in her movements as she tore the paper.  
  
She staggered as she saw the well-remembered seal.  
  
"Lady?" The messenger asked, and came forward to help her. Her father hurried forward. She tottered and seemed to fall, but did not.  
  
"Leave, leave, all of you!" She said, falling onto a chair, waving them away.  
  
The light from the crystals were flickering, but the elegant scrip read easily, and she cried, tears in thin rivulets down her pale face, tracing the smudge of fingerprints on the paper with her eyes, remembering the hand that left them, and the face of the owner of those hands.  
  
--  
  
Beloved,  
  
I apologize for the brevity of this letter. I have more to say, but time presses. By the time you got this, I should already be on the way to Losgar.  
  
Things I wish for I cannot have.  
  
People who I love leave and do not return.  
  
Never again.  
  
I cannot allow it.  
  
I will not allow it.  
  
Do you remember these lines? Written in a sudden blaze of joy when I knew you were pregnant with Nelyafinwe. The crucible broke that day, and I was wroth, for it contained a rare metal mixed for my father. I had tears in my eyes, because I had wished to please him especially that year. But you came and told me of the news, and we wrote these words together in a pleasant insanity upon the bench in the workshop.  
  
You must realize, and I know you do, the molting hurts forever, and nothing heals here. Do you realize, that ever since my birth, it seems that the grievous lot has always befallen on me! Can you blame me then, for feeling angry and resentful in a blessed realm?  
  
There's no bliss for me here.  
  
You knew of course, that's part of the reason why you left me. I would have asked you to return again, if tragedy had not come to pass once again in my life. I do not blame you, I have never blamed you, but I need to tell you this.  
  
They shall come with me. I need to see them, every one. I need them with me. I would that you come as well, but I know you will disapprove.  
  
This is madness you say, but to stay would kill me, and I am already mad, mad with grief, mad with hopelessness. There is blood on my sword and there's blood on my shirt, dried and sticky on my skin. What would you do if I went home like this? Would you shut the doors against me? Would you welcome your sons and bid their father gone?  
  
It is ungenerous for me to think this of you, but my thoughts are so lost now. I remember that you cried when you saw me after I first fashioned the Silmarils. I did not understand why then, I thought it, now I do. So wise, Nerdanel, but I could not hear your counsels when I locked myself in the workshop for three months, allowing the works of my hand to feed on my fea.  
  
Your father said that you were away every time I asked for you. Did you ever know that I went to Aurlender's halls often ever since you decided to ride and not return? I think Master Mahtan do not favor me any more, as you had so remarked so indignantly that one fateful afternoon. The silver ring, I had kept it in my pocket, unsullied. Please do not begrudge me of this, I do miss you dearly, and this was my only memory of you, other than our sons for an entire yen; he would not let me see you I think, and then, you knew I was banished.  
  
I wondered why you never came to visit, not even for Telperinquar, it sadden me that you have never seen him, he's our Curufinwe's son. Did you know you are a grandmother Nerdanel? I cannot think that you would not come if you knew that I looked for you. You always came for me, as I had always came for you when the longing became too great.  
  
You, my father, our sons, I lived for you, I hope you will remember that. Those were blessed times shared and forever beloved; there's freedom in happiness. And the moment it is gone, I can only see the darkness, and the cage of nothingness.  
  
Forgive me Nerdanel, if my words sound harsh, but you know that I always speak the truth.  
  
A part of me is already gone, I am going to seek it, and bring it back. You should not cry again when you see me. I believe there is healing in Ennore. I need to find it, and bring down the cause of all our heartaches, so things would be as before.  
  
I still love you, and I shall return when I am whole again.  
  
Yours forever,  
  
Feanaro Curufinwe 


	2. Forgotten

He read all her letters, all except one. The one he carried with him everywhere he went. He intended to read it sometimes, but every time he took out, he did not dare to open it, never more afraid of what it might say. It would remind him of what he had lost, everything he had ever lost since his birth.  
  
It came back only a short while after their parting, with Ambarussa as couriers, who shot him stinging looks even as they delivered into his hands.  
  
"She does not expect an answer." They had told him, and went off hunting with Celegorm. Perhaps those words compelled him to thrust it into his pockets without looking at it.  
  
But now he stared.  
  
The paper was caulked, as usual between them after a horrible accident once upon a time; the memory pained him even more than her seal, Mahtan's seal now, not theirs, which now bore cracks from the many times he had unconsciously fingered it.  
  
Feanaro Curufinwe ignored that he was now lodged in a cabin within a stolen ship that he had killed his kin to board; he ignored the storm outside, and the violent heaving motions of the waves. The Teleri ships do not tremble much.  
  
Sitting with one leg stretched out in front and another curled up against him, the hard wood at his back seemed, with each moment, stinging his back through his rent armor and wet clothes.  
  
"It cannot be worse." Feanor said to himself, and forcibly calm, opened the letter.  
  
--  
  
My dearest Elf,  
  
I apologize again, and I shall pretend that I heard your apology when you stood there mumbling by the door before I left.  
  
I trust that you did apologize. You must have, otherwise I would not have borne you seven sons, and lived with you for so many years.  
  
Both impertinent, we did break almost all the rules my father ever laid in his workshops, and others besides when we betrothed. Perhaps, I should have seen it, that we would break every one of theirs when we parted. I, Nerdanel the Wise, should have through all law of reason and logic, restrained Feanor, the skilled Finwe, from breaching the trust of the Valar and probably everyone else, by attempting to capture the light of the Trees. The scandal, the infamy of it all!  
  
Yet how can I, you sitting there, my fair husband upon our bed, think of Noldor, Teleri, of Vanyar politics?* They never realized; I am never wise around you. I have never been wise, it was an illusion they cast around me because I see them as they are wont to act, and a word of two or mine seemed to calm your moods; I did not calm, I convinced you, and I could not convince you if you were not eager in the first place. I could care less about what Indis thought of the grand, blaspheming enterprise, or what Artanis's opinion on the matter, when I see your face marred by a seemingly perpetual frown, when your fingers bled from overlong toil. What I could not stand was that you became heedless. Heedless not only of your family, but everything we have thought, dreamt, and planned together.  
  
I disliked your endeavor not because of jealousy, as you dared to suggest, because I see, that instead of benefiting life, as your proposed, it eats away at it. You never saw into the mirror again after that one time. I knew you saw someone else that day before you broke it. Dark colours had always seemed unfitting upon you, yet workshops and forges had ever required that somber garb, and you scarcely took them off.  
  
But it is too late to tell you. Isn't it? I wished it could have been otherwise. After all, our meetings and leavings have all but sent rumors onto a frenzied state. I had half-hoped that all would be forgotten as before until I saw them, bright against your brow during Ar-Finiel's begetting day feast. And you, you were great and dark under their light, more beautiful and more terrible than I had ever seen you.  
  
I was afraid, because I no longer knew you, so I went into the workshops, and kept you as you were in my memories.  
  
My sons I still had, they were grown and could fend for themselves, I do not begrudge them of living inside the house they were born in. Indeed, I preferred it, because seeing them would only remind of you, and maybe, in some corner of my mind, I wished that they did the same for you.  
  
I would never know. You never visited, and so I did not.  
  
Such sympathies, as if there can ever be sympathies for such a thing as that lies between you and I, they came. All your relatives, even your father: this time, they pleaded in your stead because you do not come yourself. You should, and I would come back. Yet now, you know all the implications if we compromised our arrogance, and therefore would not.  
  
Why then do I confess? Because it hurts, dear Feanor, it hurts knowing that I have been effectively been abandoned by you, and you did not even notice. You gave yourself to the work of your hands, becoming a thing possessed, and did not wake up.  
  
It is strange, as I write this in my childhood room, with the light streaming in, in front of the balcony that we had oft climbed when younger, our lives seemed to have flashed me by, the end and the beginning in the same place at last. Irony. Ultimately, after a dream we wake up upon our own beds, alone with the bittersweet taste of regret.  
  
Ambarussa is going to leave soon, so I must finish. I really should have written this and more long ago, so you would have a tome to read, to remember, and to reflect upon. But I cannot, I would not, you see. Our arrogance, as my father predicted.  
  
My fondest wish to you, as always, though you would not always believe. Even if it must reside in your inmost thoughts, remember that I do indeed give it, and other blessings besides. After all, dearest elf, I love you, and Nerdanel does not live, nor love, lightly.  
  
I miss you.  
  
Mutually preferred,  
  
Nerdanel  
  
P.S. Give my compliments to Maitimo, as I know you cannot cook well, thank him for me for keeping his brothers(and most probably his Findekano, too) well fed.  
  
--  
  
Holding the letter close, Feanor wept.  
  
*the orig. line was Yeats: "Yet how can I/ That girl standing there /My attention fix/ On Roman or on Russian/Or on Spanish politics?" 


End file.
